Scott Roarke 03 - Executive Command

by Gary Grossman

  Comley got home a half hour later but didn’t go to sleep. A phone call she’d received the other day nagged at her; a call from Sam Brown, a former student, now a practicing physician. She spent the night on the Internet with her radio tuned to a broadcast that was sounding less and less like a conspiracy.

  Aurora, Nebraska

  The same time

  Two men were also working the late shift on municipal property. They were in a small Nebraska town, but they weren’t on the city payroll. Rather, they were paid handsomely by Ibrahim Haddad.

  The pair of chemists followed procedure with great care. They had to. They were handling a deadly toxin.

  The water system in Aurora is supplied by five wells, each with an average depth of just more than two hundred feet. They feed an iconic tower, which promotes the town’s name for miles. The tower’s capacity is three hundred thousand gallons, delivering via gravity fifty-five- to fifty-seven-degree water 24/7.

  The area’s water table hadn’t significantly changed in recent years. As a result, the quality of the product remained high and the need for water treatment, low. This made it a perfect target for Haddad’s men.

  With an average daily demand of 911,117 gallons, the plan was to introduce precise amounts of toxins into the output over three consecutive nights.

  The typical morning rituals of Aurora’s citizenry—brushing their teeth, having their morning coffee, or drinking a few glasses of water would produce the desired effect.

  Twenty-six

  YMCA of Metropolitan Washington

  11 January

  0620 hrs

  Roarke attacked the elliptical machine with a vengeance. Back strengthening. Weights. Sit-ups. He focused on an image of Cooper, which masked the pain of his regimen. He stopped just short of his stomach muscles feeling like they would tear apart. Only then did he see the blonde working out directly across from him.

  She was on a machine he’d never attempted, probably because it was more for dancers than law enforcement officers. It had one obvious purpose: stretch the legs and groin muscles to create perfect splits. There were, however, other benefits as well.

  If there were another purpose, however, Christine Slocum was certainly using it correctly. The machine made for a most inviting sexual invitation that was impossible to ignore. Her rhythmic, throaty breathing only heightened the image. And then, with one last deep breath and her eyes shut, she stopped and released her legs, as if collapsing from an intensely fulfilling orgasm.

  Seconds later, she opened her eyes very pleased that Roarke had been watching. “Hello there,” she said to him. “Hope I wasn’t too noisy?”

  “Not for me,” he answered.

  “This used to be easier. I guess I need more practice.”

  “Are you a dancer?”

  “When I was growing up. Right through college. Not anymore.” Slocum slowly stood up. Her jet black leotard clung tightly to her body and contrasted her fair skin. Beads of perspiration dropped from her forehead making her perfectly beautiful face glisten. She wrapped a towel around her neck and walked closer.

  “If I don’t get in early, it feels like I’m cheating,” she said.

  Cheating. It didn’t seem like an accidental word to Roarke. None of this encounter did.

  “What do you do?” Roarke asked.

  “Oh, I work on the Hill. An assistant. I’m on the bottom, which is okay. And you?”

  Another veiled sexual reference. That would make two.

  “Oh, like everyone else around here, I’m a civil servant. Not much to talk about.”

  She studied his physique. “I bet you’re very good at what you do.” Sensing she might have gone too far, she softened. “I mean, you really throw yourself into your workout. It looked like you were someplace else; someplace serious.”

  “I just push myself as far as I can. No big deal.”

  “Well, we both work in government and we both workout. A few things in common.” She offered her hand, which he politely accepted. “That’s enough for an introduction. I’m Christine Slocum.”

  “Nice to meet you, Christine Slocum.”

  “And you are?” She still held his hand.

  Here was a woman who could be best described by most men as “hot.” For the record, Roarke added another adjective. Calculating.

  “Sorry, yes,” he answered. “I’m Scott Roarke.”

  Now having his name, which she fully well knew already, she let go.

  “And what exactly do you do as a civil servant, Mr. Roarke?”

  “Scott.” He was sorry he said that.

  “Okay, Scott,” she replied appreciatively. In conversational terms, she felt she made it to first base.

  “Recently, a lot of clipping and filing.”

  She laughed. “Me, too. I’m working for my second congressman. And it seems everything comes down to clipping, filing, collating, and stapling, even with computers everywhere. This town is going to drown in paperwork.”

  “You’ve got that right,” he offered lightly.

  “Eventually I’d like to run for Congress myself. To be perfectly honest,” which she wasn’t, “that’s the real reason I try to stay in shape. It’s a helluva routine and not everyone comes in healthy or leaves healthy.”

  Christine Slocum, the very last speechwriter for Congressman, then-President-elect Teddy Lodge, had summed up Lodge’s sudden exit from government and life.

  “And why do you really hit the gym with such abandon, Scott?”

  “When work doesn’t work out, my workout does.”

  “Like now? Like today?”

  “Yup. Some tough days.” He had said enough. Maybe too much.

  Then came the awkward silence. Where was this going to go? Since Slocum set it up, she decided to take control.

  “So, Scott. Nice to officially meet you.”

  “Likewise.” Another thing he shouldn’t have said.

  Ten minutes later, Roarke was out of the shower and toweling off. The general quiet and solitude of the men’s dressing room at this hour was interrupted by a commotion building at the entrance. Roarke heard a few whoas and whistles and turned to the excitement. To his complete surprise there was a woman in their midst. But not just any woman. Christine Slocum. She was made up and dressed to kill in a tight pencil skirt, white blouse, and heels.

  The blonde breezed past the ten men in various stages of undress—primarily young lobbyists and Congressional aides. She took no notice of anyone except for the one man she came to see. And she saw all of him.

  Without any embarrassment she said, “Give me your hand.”

  Shocked by her presence as much as her bravado, Roarke extended his right hand. She turned it palm up and wrote a series of numbers with a red Sharpie she had readied. “My phone number.”

  Looking down she whispered, “Try not to rub it off before you call me. I’d love to see you again.”

  With that final suggestive remark she left to the same whoas and whistles she heard on the way in.

  Scott Roarke added another descriptive adjective to the list. Fearless.

  Marriott Metro Hotel

  The same time

  Richard Cooper looked out his window onto Fourteenth Street, NW. He, or the man he pretended to be, had just gotten laid again by Lily Michaelson. After showering, she left for the airport and her real life in Buffalo, New York. There, she would dream about next year’s tryst. It would sustain her, though Cooper had no similar fantasies. His mind was elsewhere, planning an assassination that would bring him completion that sex with Mrs. Michaelson would never provide.

  Cooper had conceived an operational strategy after reading an online Washington Post article a week earlier. According to the story, the Johnsons were going to host a charity reception for the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center at their home. That reception would be tonight. CEOs, philanthropists, and members of Congress were due to attend. The evening would move from cocktails and hors d’oeuvres to speeches, and then on
Cooper’s schedule, the general’s death. He reasoned that no one would want dessert after that.

  He already figured out how to infiltrate the party, even if the Secret Service or Johnson’s army buddies were running defensive patterns. Ex-filtrating might be more challenging, but the Google map of the property, now up on his iPad, provided a clear escape route.

  With General Johnson dead, Cooper could disappear forever. Thanks to his earnings from Ibrahim Haddad, he had the means to live anywhere under any identity he created. Richard Cooper was long gone, twice killed. Maybe he would reinvent himself as a novelist. He always felt he could write political thrillers. And with more actual experience than anyone in his stock and trade, he thought he might be able to make the bestseller list.

  Twenty-seven

  0715 hrs

  Roarke ducked his head down to shield the stinging January wind. It made talking on the phone almost impossible.

  “What?” Penny Walker asked. “Hard to hear you.”

  Roarke stopped and turned his back to the wind making it easier to talk and listen.

  “Why don’t you just call me when you get where you’re going,”

  “Can’t wait.”

  “Let me guess. You need a secretary again.”

  “Sort of,” Roarke said above the wind. “Jesus, it’s cold.”

  “What this time?”

  “Hit the computer keys. I need some background.”

  “Okay, shoot.”

  Roarke switched the phone to his left hand, opened the palm of his right and read the sequence of ten numbers Christine Slocum had so provocatively written down.

  “A phone number,” Walker noted.

  “Right, Sherlock. A cell,” Roarke replied.

  “I have a thought. Why don’t you just dial it, sweetheart?”

  “Not until you can tell me more about the person on the other end.”

  “Male, female?”

  “Female. That’s all you get.”

  “Uh oh, trouble in paradise?”

  “Just trying to figure out that if this woman means trouble, what kind is it going to be.”

  “Got it. Be back to you soon as possible. Working on some other things, too.”

  Roarke braced himself against the wind for another six blocks. He calculated his pace. He’d be at the White House within ten.

  The White House

  “Good morning, Louise.” Roarke greeted Louise Swingle, President Taylor’s dedicated secretary and his eyes, ears, and virtual keeper. She’d been by Taylor’s side since he was in the Senate and could read his moods better than her own husband’s. Basically, the fifty-four-year-old mother governed the private life of the man who governed the nation. Swingle also took a personal interest in Scott Roarke and was pleased he had a remarkable woman by his side.

  “Good morning, Scott. I’ll let him know you’re here.”

  Roarke removed his parka and slung it over his right forearm. As Louise Swingle punched a button on the phone she noticed the writing on his palm.

  “And what’s that?” she said, recognizing it as a number.

  Before he could respond the president was on the intercom.

  “Yes, Louise?”

  “Mr. Roarke is ready, Mr. President.”

  “Send him right in.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Roarke smiled and started to walk. Louise, still curious, pointed to Roarke’s right palm. “And that?” she asked again.

  “I’ve got a stalker,” he replied.

  “Oh? Get rid of her,” Louise Swingle remarked. She wasn’t kidding.

  Roarke waved good-bye with his left hand.

  Roarke strode into the Oval Room. The president was standing, sipping coffee in an official White House mug. Next to him was his national security advisor, now Taylor’s appointee for vice president, pending Senate confirmation.

  “Good morning, boss,” Roarke offered. It was a highly informal greeting, but considering their history, the president allowed Roarke to get away with it. “Morning, General.”

  “Mr. Roarke, good to see you. The president tells me I’m a prisoner here because of you. Care to elaborate?”

  Morgan Taylor motioned for both men to sit around the coffee table at the center of the seating area. Taylor took a high-backed, hand-carved oak chair that had been Thomas Jefferson’s. He chose to sit in it whenever he felt the conversation would take on historical proportions. Roarke’s text the previous night certainly suggested that.

  “Okay, Scott,” the president said. “To J3’s point, what’s going on?”

  “In the most basic terms, a highly skilled assassin has been working his way through the country, targeting a variety of men in various occupations.”

  “Targeting?” General Johnson questioned.

  “Killing,” Roarke continued.

  “To what end?” J3 demanded.

  Roarke looked at President Taylor, who encouraged him to go on.

  “As retribution, sir. You’ll know him from his involvement with Lodge and the Inauguration Day shootings. At first he was presumed dead. He survived. And he’s on a new mission; a personal mission. He’s been working his way up the chain of command he served under in Iraq, eliminating one subject after another.

  “He’s taken out salesmen, ranchers, teachers, realtors, judges—all ex-GIs who overruled his field decision in Iraq. I believe you are aware of the case, General.”

  Jonas Jackson Johnson remained stone silent.

  “His appeal was denied…by everyone. Before storming a building, which he considered a trap, a suicide mission, he appealed to command. Acting under orders, he led his men into the building. They all died. Or at least it was assumed they all died. All but one did. The mission commander, then a dedicated army lieutenant, survived. Now he is a killer. He has remained one step ahead of me for more than a year. But for the first time I know where former U.S. Army 1LT Richard Cooper will strike next.”

  The general unconsciously began nodding.

  “Based on what we’ve pieced together, only one man in this scenario remains alive. You, General Johnson. You.”

  Twenty-eight

  Moscow

  The same time

  Arkady Gomenko discovered that the best way to uncover state secrets was to do it out in the open. For this he needed just a couple items: official Kremlin stationary and a copy of a signature that would open doors. He had both. Gomenko counted on a cumbersome bureaucracy that spun in circles through dynamic inaction and bureaucrats who would pass work off rather than be troubled by it. Two more things that worked in his favor.

  After giving into the American spy’s request, Arkady Gomenko brought what he needed to his apartment. He wrote a draft of a memorandum, crossing out a few words, inserting others. Once he was satisfied, he typed it on his Sony laptop in Cambria, a font known to be used by the one government official whose name he was forging—Petrov Androsky. Androsky’s name would make the correspondence stand out for its authority and as a waste of time. Androsky was the prime minister’s brother-in-law, useless as a high commissioner of internal affairs and a pain in the ass to his family. He was notorious for requesting reports he never read, launching studies that were never needed, and wasting everyone else’s time.

  Yes, reasoned Gomenko. Androsky would order this report.

  It was actually a very brief document issued on official stationary with Androsky’s scrawled, but completely identifiable, signature. In the fake document, Androsky demanded a detailed synopsis with key names and dates on the old, retired Red Banner project, also known as the Andropov Institute. No reason was given. No reason was needed. The prime minister’s brother-in-law wanted it. The report would become someone’s bad luck in the FSB’s research department. Considering the memo was directed to Yuri Ranchenkov, the overworked and constantly annoyed deputy director general of internal intelligence of the Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, it would end up in the hands of the ever-beleaguered Arkady Gomenko. For that he was ce
rtain.

  Gomenko looked at his finished work; a masterful piece of espionage if he said so himself. It would go in Ranchenkov’s inbox tomorrow.

  The White House

  General,” Roarke continued, “this man never misses. Therefore, it’s our responsibility to take away his opportunity. But, he is also a master of disguises and dialects.

  “J3’s getting round-the-clock Secret Service protection,” President Taylor offered.

  “Like the protection Teddy Lodge had?”

  “That was different,” Taylor argued.

  “Really? Cooper is capable of penetrating any security. You’re a marked target. And we can control where you’ll be. Here.”

  The general looked at Taylor flashing an expression that Roarke couldn’t miss.

  “What?” Roarke asked. “What?” he repeated.

  “It’s not as easy as that,” the president said. “The general is hosting a reception at his house.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Good lord! Cancel it.”

  “No,” Johnson proclaimed.

  “With all due respect, General, that’s just plain nuts.”

  “It’s in my home. Everyone is vetted and that’s it.”

  “Have you explained how things run around here, boss? We take assassination threats seriously.”

  “Scott, you’re not going to have any more luck talking any sense into this horse’s ass than I’ve had.”

  “Horse’s ass or not, General, you are putting others at risk.”

  “Acknowledged, Mr. Roarke. But I’ve been in battle before and never run.”

  “This is neither a battle nor a retreat, General Johnson. There is a skilled assassin out to kill you. He is greater than the Jackal, and you are already in his crosshairs.”

  “Then I’ll be the bait in a trap that the bureau will spring.”

  “General, maybe you haven’t fished or trapped for a while. Sometimes the bait is already dead.”